Wednesday, December 20, 2006

Talking Points Memo quotes the Jewish Telegraphic Agency, which quotes the president of Yeshiva University, who was at the menorah-lighting ceremony at the White House yesterday, quoting Bush that “Terrorists can’t be God-believing people.” Also, at the event he talked to everyone who would listen about the need to confront Iran.

Iraq today: guards at a Baghdad bank decided that a funeral procession was fraudulent, part of an attempt to rob the bank, and shot it up. They were wrong.

The WaPo says Maliki would only go along with a “surge” if it was combined with a purge, that is if the American forces attacked Sunnis rather than Shiites in Baghdad. According to Maliki, this would result in reduced activity by Shiite militias, because American troops and the Iraqi army would make them redundant by killing Sunnis for them. The logic is impeccable, you have to admit.

Back to the WaPo interview with Bush I started talking about in the previous post, this time with a complete transcript. The big news, evidently, is his admission that we’re not winning in Iraq, or more specifically, and attributing the formulation to the alliterative Peter Pace, “We’re not winning, we’re not losing.” So he’s 50% correct, which is a 50-point improvement, so well done, George.

He denies that the election was about the American people wanting to leave Iraq: “There’s not a lot of people saying, ‘Get out now.’ Most Americans are saying, ‘We want to achieve the objective.’” Are they saying that? Let’s make a completely fair, totally objective test of that, with a poll of the readers of this blog. Remember, if you’re not American, you can’t vote.

So what was the election about, in Bush’s view? Well, “people are not satisfied with the progress being made in Iraq,” the fucking ingrates. Also, “look, you’ve got a guy using earmarks to enrich himself; there was sex and all kinds of issues”. He also says that “people are sick and tired of the needless partisanship in Washington.” Which is funny, because in 2000 he said people voted for him (a uniter, not a divider) because they hated partisanship, and now they voted for the opposition party for the same exact reason. Huh.

He said he wants to work with Democrats on Social Security, which he rather worryingly called an entitlement.

Asked whether the idea of invading Iraq was “not so great,” Bush said, “I’ve never really asked that question.” No kidding.